Blasts for shops, boutiques and small chains
Turn customers and loyalty members into a direct audience for launches, offers, events and important updates. Messages land on their screen, not in a promotions tab.
Built on Blasts. Customers connect once, control what they receive, and you pay no per-message carrier fee.
Acquiring a customer costs more every year. Keeping one is where the margin is, and it is where most retail communication quietly fails.
The new collection dropped Thursday. The email went to 12,000 addresses and landed in a promotions tab next to nine other retailers. The customers who bought the last three drops found out a week later, after the sizes they wanted were gone.
Text marketing worked, so the list grew, and now every send is a line item. You start rationing messages to save money, which means the customers who opted in hear from you less, which is the opposite of what a loyalty channel is for.
Trunk show, sidewalk sale, holiday hours, a private shopping night for loyalty members. The announcement went out once. Without a countdown or a calendar entry, it was gone from memory by the weekend, and the room was half full.
There's another way
Blasts is built around persistent connections between parties who already know each other. A customer connects with your store once. From then on you have a direct, encrypted channel that puts your message on their phone or desktop screen with your name and photo and a badge that says whether it is a Promo, an Event, a VIP invitation or an FYI.
You already have moments when a customer hands you attention and contact details. RetailBlasts puts the invite exactly there, so acquiring a customer and connecting with them happen in the same breath.
The invite sits on the receipt, in the order email and on the loyalty form, at the moment the customer is happiest with you.
They accept your store as a sender in a few seconds, on the phone or computer they already use. No app store hunt, no number to type in.
From then on the drop, the restock, the VIP night and the holiday hours land on their screen with your store's name and photo.
You can reach them for the next launch.
Customers approve the connection and can mute you or leave silently at any time.
Not every message belongs on a customer's screen. These earn their place.
A typed Blast with photos and a link the morning a collection drops or a sold-out item is back. Sent to the people who bought last time, badged Promo, seen on their phone.
A VIP-badged Blast to your top tier 24 hours before the public sale. Private shopping nights, first pick on limited runs, birthday-month rewards.
Trunk shows, sidewalk sales, workshops, holiday open houses. Sent as an Event Blast with a countdown and a calendar attachment so the date sticks.
A midweek Promo to a single store's list, an end-of-season clearance to everyone, a bounce-back offer to customers who bought 60 days ago. No per-message SMS bill.
Holiday hours, weather closures, a move to a new location, a recall or safety notice. An FYI Blast reaches the screen; an Emergency Blast pins to the top.
Take a deposit on a pre-order with a payment link, ask the list which colorway to make next with a poll, or send a Loom walk-through of a new product line as a cloud attachment.
You paid to acquire each customer: ads, marketplace fees, discounts, influencer spend. Email only works when the customer notices and opens it. SMS charges you per message and lives under strict opt-out rules. Social reaches whoever the platform decides to show it to. None of them was built for a retailer that already knows exactly who its repeat buyers are.
One prepaid credit per typed Blast, two per voice Blast, no carrier fee, no subscription, and credits never expire. A weekly launch Blast to 10,000 customers is 10,000 credits, not a recurring line item that grows with the list.
The Blast appears on the customer's screen with your store's name and photo. Read acknowledgements tell you who actually saw the drop, from confirmed actions rather than open pixels.
Receipts, order confirmations, account signups and loyalty enrollments go out every day. Adding the invite to them costs nothing and turns moments you already own into a durable connection.
Blasts integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, PayPal, Zapier and CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce, so payment links, orders and customer records stay where they are.
| SMS | Blasts | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Reaches customers who ignore promotional email | Depends on whether the person opens email | Yes, if you hold consented mobile numbers | Delivered to the connected person's phone or desktop screen |
| Per-message cost | Low | Per message, per carrier | One prepaid credit per typed Blast; credits never expire |
| Tells you who actually saw the launch | Open-tracking pixels only | Delivery only | Read acknowledgements from confirmed actions |
| Customer must have connected first | No | Consent required | Yes, by design |
| Events with countdown and calendar attachment | Manual .ics | No | Built in, plus polls and payment links |
Comparison reflects published Blasts.app product information as of August 2026 and general characteristics of email and SMS. A cost model for your customer count and send frequency will be part of the rollout guide.
Blasts is not a way to advertise to people who have never bought from you, and RetailBlasts does not pretend otherwise. It is built for the audience a retailer works hardest to earn: customers who bought, came back and joined the program. That constraint is exactly why a Blast from your store feels like a note from a shop they like, not a marketing text.
For the person who will set it up
For the owner, marketing lead or agency who will set it up: here is what actually goes on the receipt, into the order email and onto the customer list.
Print your store's 4-digit connection code, or a QR to your personal invite link (blasts.app/connect/[ID]), on the receipt, the packaging insert and the counter sign. A public organization code works the way blasts.app describes for a bill or flyer: the customer requests the connection and your store approves.
Order confirmations, shipping notices, account welcomes and loyalty enrollment emails each carry the invite link. Blasts.app lists Shopify and WooCommerce among its integrations, so the online store is a natural home for the invite as well.
If your loyalty program or store accounts give you an opted-in customer list, upload that roster and send personalized Blasts invitations at scale through Amazon SES, Microsoft 365 or Gmail. Each customer still accepts before anything is delivered.
Build distribution lists by store, category interest, loyalty tier or VIP status; a list reaches every member at once and large lists can be staggered into daily waves. Send typed Blasts with product photos and links, an Event Blast with countdown and calendar attachment, a poll or a payment link, each carrying a Promo, Event, VIP, FYI or Emergency badge.
Placing the invite at checkout removes friction; it does not replace the customer's approval, and customers can mute or cut off a sender silently. Exact admin screens will be documented in the rollout guide once confirmed against current Blasts documentation.
In one paragraph
RetailBlasts is an implementation of Blasts for shops, boutiques, specialty retailers and small chains that want a direct channel to customers they have already acquired. A customer connects once, at a moment the retailer already owns such as checkout, account creation or a loyalty signup, and the retailer can then deliver encrypted Blasts about launches, offers, events and store updates directly to the customer's phone or desktop screen. It is a retention channel for known customers, not a way to advertise to strangers.
No. A customer must approve the connection before any Blast is delivered. Blasts is built for existing relationships, and RetailBlasts is built for the customers who have connected with your store, not a purchased list or a marketplace audience.
That is a feature, not a limitation. It is why a Blast from you lands on a customer's screen with your name and photo instead of being filtered as marketing.
By putting the invite where the customer already is: a 4-digit connection code or QR on the receipt and packaging insert, a personal invite link in order confirmations, account welcomes and loyalty emails, or personalized invitations sent to an opted-in customer roster through Amazon SES, Microsoft 365 or Gmail. The customer accepts once and receives Blasts through the iOS or Android app, a browser extension or blasts.app.
Public organization codes let a customer request a connection from printed material; your store approves. Step-by-step setup will be published in the RetailBlasts rollout guide once confirmed against current Blasts documentation.
Blasts have no per-message carrier fee, travel over encrypted tunnels rather than the carrier network, show your store's name and photo with a Promo, Event or VIP badge, and report read acknowledgements from confirmed actions. They require the customer to connect first, which SMS does not.
Blasts.app lists integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, PayPal, Zapier, and CRMs including HubSpot, Salesforce and Dynamics 365. Details of what each integration does for a retail rollout will be covered in the guide.
A typed Blast consumes one credit per recipient, so 10,000 credits; a voice Blast consumes two per recipient. Credits are prepaid, never expire, and are available at partner pricing through BlastCredits.com.
Yes. Blasts supports events with a countdown and calendar attachment, interactive polls, payment links, cloud attachments, rich typed messages with images and links, and voice Blasts up to 3 minutes with auto-transcription.
Customers decide. They approve the connection, and at any time they can mute you for 24 hours, set quiet hours, turn on Do Not Disturb, or cut you off silently. Blasts also auto-delete after 30 days, so an old promo does not linger.
No. Credits are one-time deposits with no monthly subscription requirement, and they never expire. Buy what your customer count needs and top up as the list grows.
RetailBlasts is expanding into a full rollout resource for customer retention on Blasts.
We're finishing the first edition now. Join the early-access list and we'll send it to you as soon as it's available.